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The first chair established at the Panthéon-Sorbonne Foundation is dedicated to the insurance sector

12/12/2018

Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and the French Insurance Federation today signed the agreement establishing the first chair of the Panthéon-Sorbonne Foundation: "Insurance and Society, historicity of knowledge and practice of interdisciplinarity.”

Having worked together for two years within a multi-annual research programme, the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and the French Insurance Federation decided to build on their collaboration by creating the chair “Insurance and Society, historicity of knowledge and practice of interdisciplinarity”.

The aim of this chair, like that of the research programme of the same name it replaces, is to analyse the insurance sector’s responses to social developments, crises or changes, both in France and abroad.

The work of the chair will have three aims:

to apply an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of the work of the insurance industry, using the methods and tools of the human and social sciences, mathematics and statistics,

to understand long-term trends, continuities and disruptions in order to place insurance within a chronological framework,

to select innovative lines of enquiry within a historical perspective to enable the study of the functions of insurance in the light of the major political, economic, scientific, technical and social challenges.

The activities carried out in the context of this chair will have six areas of research. The first five[1] concern the role of insurance through an organisational, political, legal, economic and social analysis. The sixth concerns the study of the spoliations committed during the Second World War: this will continue the research of the Mattéoli Mission.

According to Georges Haddad, president of the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and of the Panthéon-Sorbonne Foundation, and Bernard Spitz, president of the FFA: “The creation of a chair dedicated to the insurance sector by the Panthéon-Sorbonne Foundation and the FFA demonstrates the leading role played by insurance in the development of our society”.

1 Forms of representation of the insurance sector and functions of the professional bodies – Health and insurance: the challenges of a renewed social debate – Compulsory insurance: a past and present transnational debate at the heart of legal systems and assessment practices – Crises, wars and terrorism: a new relationship between insurance and the State – Memories of insurance through its corpora.